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Sunday, May 24, 2015

This week a number of notable titles have been released. We have a new entry to the popular franchise Ice Age and many new entertainment apps. All of the below apps are available to download for free from the Good e-Reader App Store, no registration required.

Tidal – This is the big Jay Z venture everyone is talking about. Tidal is the world's first music service with High Fidelity sound quality, High Definition music videos and Curated Editorial by music journalists, artists and experts, making for a simply superior experience.

Meerkat – Meerkat allows you to live stream video from your phone to all of your Twitter followers at once. Press ‘Stream’, and instantly your live video stream shows up in your follower’s Twitter feeds.

MixRadio – MixRadio is the perfect FREE app for music lovers who like to discover fresh new tunes every day. As you listen, MixRadio learns the artists you like, giving you a PERSONALIZED experience. The more you listen, the better it gets. So, with a whole world of songs out there, you can spend more time listening and less time searching.

RealTimes (with RealPlayer) – RealTimes with RealPlayer automatically turns your photos and videos into beautiful video "Stories" that you can share with friends and family and relive using any device! All your moments get saved in a private cloud that's just for you.

Lumi: Smart News & Videos – Lumi uses powerful data science to pick stories just for you and learns every time you like or skip a story. They source from all major news outlets as well as indie publications, and cover everything from current affairs to business and politics, sport, design, tech, and music.

Ice Age Avalanche – Join Sid, Manny and Diego on an epic Ice Age journey in search of a long-forgotten treasure in this fun new puzzle game from the makers of Ice Age Village and Ice Age Adventures! Swipe fruit in any direction to match 3 or more of the same kind as you travel with the Sub-Zero Heroes around the Ice Age world.

Amy the Starry Archer – The evil Star-Eater has stolen all of the stars from the night sky, and it's up to Amy and her magical bow to get them back! Soar through the skies of a fantasy world, in this visually stunning, flight-based action game!

Star Walk 2 Free – Star Walk 2 is an exquisite stargazing tool that combines astronomical data with premium technology to deliver an effortless journey through thousands of stars, comets, and constellations. All you have to do is point your device at the sky.

The President of the Authors Guild has decreed that authors should not be writing online for free. She says that it devalues book sales and there is no correlation between blogging and making more money.

In an interview with the Bookseller, Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson said "People write on Huffington Post, they write for Goodreads, they write for Medium.com: valuable sites owned by big tech companies that make a lot of money for those companies. Writers choose to write there for nothing and to provide content for nothing. That's another issue, and that is something that writers are doing deliberately."

Robinson drives home the point that writing for free, does not increase book sales. "I don't know that anyone has figures on sales that result from this kind of writing (for free)," she said. "Everyone says, 'get your name out there', but does that really translate to connecting to the hard mental presence of the book? We want writers to recognize what is happening, to be aware of this trend, that writers themselves are contributing to the idea that their writing doesn't deserve to be paid for."

Roxanne is dead wrong about authors devaluing their books if they write for free. Many of today’s most notable writers are constantly in the media, whether its William Gibson writing for Wired or Hugh Howey’s Authors Earnings website. Its important to be build brand identity and to write for publications who reach readers, who wouldn’t have otherwise known who the author was. I have discovered many new writers who after the article ends, mentions their latest book.

What Roxanne is advocating is that writers shouldn’t be blogging or contributing book reviews to GoodReads. Instead, they should be writing more books. I think this is a load of crap, if you are just writing books, who is going to read them if they don’t know who the author is? You might as well as be a lowly self-published writer on Smashwords.